Album review: Dylan's latest outtakes offer a tale worth telling

Wednesday

Oct 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMOct 29, 2008 at 2:27 AM

Bob Dylan's phrasing, his intonation, the character with which he imbues the words he’s singing — these are the things that make his songs brilliant musically and not just lyrically. That has rarely been more apparent than on his latest Bootleg Series set, “Tell Tale Signs.”

OK, I’ll say it: Bob Dylan, while he may not have what you’d call a traditionally great voice (duh), is one of the best singers of the rock era, and even beyond. His phrasing, his intonation, the character with which he imbues the words he’s singing — these are the things that make his songs brilliant musically and not just lyrically. In other words, what makes him a brilliant musician and not just a poet.

That has never been truer than it has in the last several decades, and rarely been more apparent than on his latest Bootleg Series set, “Tell Tale Signs.”

It seems he’s never been more at home with that croaky, gravelly instrument of his, and the way he winds it around these songs — both the unreleased material and the alternate versions of tracks we know — makes this collection far more than an amalgam of outtakes and curiosities for the die-hards. It stands on its own with the likes of recent classics like “Time Out of Mind” and “Love and Theft.”

Not that the outtakes aren’t fascinating. Dylan’s often said his albums are just blueprints of his songs to be fleshed out over the course of their existence, but it’s amazing how fully formed those blueprints — and even the blueprints of the blueprints, like the songs here — really are.

With the exception of the mournful “Born in Time” — a marked improvement over the one on the oddly produced and generally forgotten “Under the Red Sky” album — I’d say none of these tracks should have supplanted the original album versions. But the two versions each of “Mississippi” and “Dignity,” for instance, with their changing tempos and vocal styles and new verses woven throughout, offer a window into Dylan’s creative process.

The second “Dignity,” for one, has some great lyrical additions that play up Dylan’s sly humor: “Step off the train, walk 30 steps it begins to rain, I’m asking somebody with water on his brain, have you seen Dignity?”

It’s also interesting to hear the alternative version of a track like “Most of the Time” from “Oh, Mercy” — with a faster tempo and stripped of Daniel Lanois’ eerie production, the same song elicits a completely different emotional reaction. The original album version is Dylan at his most heartbreaking — it’s a wrenching self-portrait of a man who knows that he’s lying to himself. In the alternate track, though the lyrics are basically the same, the singer comes across as someone who may actually be “halfways content.” The first singer may have last seen his lost love a few years before; the second one a few decades. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition. Both songs, it’s worth noting, are wonderful.

Strip those and the live tracks (more on those later) from “Tell Tale Signs,” though, and what’s left plays like an original album worthy of the Dylan canon. “Red River Shore” aches with nostalgia and heartbreak; “Marching to the City” drips and builds with gospel and blues; “Miss the Mississippi,” a Jimmie Rodgers cover, is poignant, melancholy and yet somehow soothing — it exemplifies the “archaic music” that Larry “Ratso” Sloman cites in the liner notes as fueling Dylan’s most recent rebirth.

That would be enough, but the live tracks on the set add yet another dimension, and make you hope Bob has at least one more live double-disc in him. His voice on “High Water” and “Ring Them Bells” is surprisingly robust, almost as if the Dylan of “Before the Flood” had come out the other end of the torrent a little creakier but none the worse for wear.

There are quibbles — Sloman raves over the eight-minute Civil War lament “’Cross the Green Mountain,” but I can’t seem to get through it without my eyes glazing over. And not all of these tracks may be “bootlegs” — some (like “Mountain”) were on soundtracks, the “Political World” outtake has been available on iTunes and I’ll be darned if “Series of Dreams” isn’t the same one from Bootleg Vol. III.

But taken as a whole, this is another Dylan collection that will make you shake your head in wonder — and be glad you’re here at this moment in time to see just what else Bob has left up his sleeve.

Peter Chianca writes the blog "Blogness on the Edge of Town," on Bruce Springsteen and other rock music topics.